Valentina Magaletti

Valentina Magaletti is a drummer and percussionist based in London. She treats the drum kit as a site for exploring politics and queer identity, using unconventional sound sources from washing machines to street objects alongside her solo work and collaborations in post-punk and experimental music.

Percussion, for Valentina Magaletti, is never just timekeeping. The London-based Italian drummer approaches the kit (whether a standard trap set, a porcelain instrument made by sculptor Yves Chaudouët, a washing machine, or objects pulled off the street in Porto) as a site where politics, ritual, and queer identity collide. Her 2022 solo record A Queer Anthology of Drums, built from low-fi drones, field recordings, and modulated percussive debris, made that stance explicit. With producer Al Wootton as Holy Tongue, she channels post-punk dub into something claustrophobic and alive. With Raime as Moin, her recorded drum parts get dismantled and rewired into noise rock. Her most recent collaboration, Seismo with Dutch electronic artist Upsammy, was seeded by a commission from Amsterdam's Rijksmuseum. The question underneath all of it stays constant: what does a drum sound like when it refuses to be a macho instrument?